Little Igor's Dream


Little Igor Nelson cuddled his fuzzy teddy bear. He shifted the bear’s hard plastic leg to one side so that it wouldn’t dig into his ribs in the night.  Shit, mine’s tangled in the sheets again.  His mom had finally given up trying to get him to take his off at night.  He looked up one last time at the poster of Terry Fox on his wall, clapped his hands to turn off the light, and prepared for sweet dreams. 

     Hypnogogic imagery slowly filled his perceptions: endless circles, like peg leg tracks in the snow, and then, as the snow melted, mud, mud that suddenly flushed red.  The undulating circles gradually formed a face, and then a body.  The face spoke.

     “Kid, he’s my hero too.  Why do you think I’m doing this?  I miss him too. But Fox is dead, and I need you now.”

    The image morphed into a field of multi-hued tulips, and then into the face of Bill Van der Zalm.

     “Igor, you’re a nice boy, I can see that.  We all miss Terry.  But Steve needs you now.” 

     The premier’s bold visage softened, his hair thinned.  It had become that of Don Cherry.  “Kid, root for Steve. HEY, he drinks Molsons!”

     Cherry’s face quickly fell away.  It had been blasted apart by a gentle white light, like the kind that surrounded Jesus in the picture Igor’s grandmother kept on her TV.  From the midst of the light materialized Terry Fox.

     “Igor, my child, don’t listen to them.  Be tempted not.  Oinof smokes cigarettes! And he doesn’t have good hair.  And he’s a goddamned bohunk.”

     Little Igor’s eyes bolted open.  “Fuck!”